HWLA 2 preparatory May research exchange
STEIM and Waag Society for Old and New Media
May 25 – June 5, 2001

Participants:
Jeff Mann and Michelle Teran (Toronto, Canada)
Niels Bogaards, Sher Doruff and Tom Demeyer (KeyStroke team, Waag Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Sponsored by:
International Trade of Canada/avec l'appui du Ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Commerce international du Canada


In May, 2001, Jeff Mann and Michelle Teran went to Amsterdam to participate in a two week residency at STEIM with the developers of KeyStroke.

Our activities at STEIM involved experiments with performance ideas and techniques, as well as some technical development. The bulk of the work done focused on developing telematic interface devices and control systems for media performance art, and integrating them with the KeyStroke software system developed by Waag Society for Old and New Media. The goal of this work was to prepare for the HWLA2 international collaboration taking place at the Banff Centre for the Arts, August 2001.

The first two days of the worklab involved theoretical and practical discussions of the implications of kinetic telematic performance interfaces. What are the types of relationships that one can have that go beyond sound and image and venture into the physical and kinetic? A number of conclusions were reached with regards to scales of time and of space, and of potential technological and aesthetic approaches to these conditions. We also began to gather appropriate materials and devices to be used in the experiments.

The latter half of the second day involved detailed technical discussions regarding software development for the Keystroke platform. A protocol for for sharing data streams between Keystroke and other generic devices/systems using TCP/IP was agreed upon. Keystroke developers Demeyer and Bogaards began work on programming the necessary code.

The next several days were devoted to various experiments in the lab. Initially, several ready-made mechatronic devices were modified and connected to the computer via a MIDI interface. This allowed us to carry out basic tests of the concept and techniques. A number of problems and limitations of the system were discovered. In particular, the timing information for MIDI streams across the network required improvement, which proved problematic when attempting to generate fluid gestural responses from sensor input over a network. The KeyStroke developers were asked to solve this particular problem. Further conceptual and aesthetic issues were addressed in the experiments.

The next step was to create a network-animated system that could be incorporated into all kinds of materials and objects. Miniature R/C servo motors were selected as actuators. A circuit board was developed and programmed to allow the Keystroke software to control the motors through MIDI. Subsequent experiments involved constructions for testing motion and gestural characteristics, using infrared and other sensor data routed over the Internet via Keystroke.

The final outcome of this residency was the development of a servo circuit board, a TCP plug-in for KeyStroke and a KeyStroke object for Max. These technologies were successfully used in the Jornada Network, Jornada Bar, Rabbits and Cow, and Jornada/Servo Event prototypes during HWLA2-Airwaves.


View quicktime documentation of the prototype system we developed during the two weeks we were at STEIM.